MBP with OS X 10.6 freezes on boot up. Unable to use USB.

My macbook pro is not booting. It stops at white screen with apple logo. I tried the sequence posted on apple's support website but am stalled at the step where it asks me to load from install disks. I have lost the install disks. So downloaded the SL10A432 user dvd image on a usb stick with transmac on a windows machine.

When I try to boot with this build with "c" key on startup, the MBP appears to load from usb (lights flicker on the usb stick) and I see a progress bar. After sometime, the progress bar disappears and the spinning wheel appears again.

I restarted this time with option key - and selected the usb drive. The startup manager correctly recognizes the usb stick as "MAC OS X Install DVD" I select to boot from it but then I get a popup message saying that I need to restart my computer. When I do, it stops on the same screen i.e. apple logo and spinning wheel.

I would appreciate any insights and guidance. This is my first tryst with Mac+OS X. Have been a windows guy all my life.

Yep! It's pretty bad. I also have made an appt. at genius bar. But reading other people's experiences I do not have a lot of hope.

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AFAIK you can not copy a DMG file onto a USB stick, you have to use Disk Utility to burn the image to a CD/DVD or use a program Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to extract the data and it will also bless the system.

Now, have you tried to boot up in safe mode, hold the Shift key while starting up.

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